Perch @perchingpath@eldritch.cafe

Refuge in flowers and fake leather, refuge in claws and blood, refuge in cider and garlic, refuge in snowstorms and cold water.

I begin referring to sweat as "animalic acid" in my formulae as a matter of style. You assume I mean gastric fluid or bile & go to a great deal of fuss for nothing. I apologize profusely. We relate the anecdote at our wedding as we wait for the tincture in our guests' champagne to take effect.

Just scratched a long bloody line down the center of my chest by pulling on yesterday's shirt without checking the pin that kept it from gapping over my tits. Breasts in the possession of the careless or untrained are a pernicious hazard & that's why I'm introducing legislation t—
And that's when the sniper hit. The full text of my bill hasn't been released to the public.

Floating out to fill the birdfeeders & feed the mosquitoes at sweltering streetlit 4 A.M. because I want to be a helpful ghost.

(Ravenous was a triumph of gore-hurts-less-than-sex homoeroticism frustratingly tainted throughout by what's probably 3 cumulative script pages of racist nonsense, and as a teen I wanted them to kiss as they bled out in that absurd trap.)

Dream of briskly, repeatedly traversing a haunted house, in the manner an army recruit might an obstacle course. If I ever let on that sourceless blood & shattering mirrors no longer perturbed me, I'd be disqualified, so I kept my eyes wide & leant hard into every stale frisson.

If you find the world near-unbearably sensorially abrasive, you maybe ought to consider experimenting with your hormone levels regardless of how gender's been treating you.

Happy smoke night, —. I considered saving a few wisps in a handkerchief to enclose with this letter, but of course it's only good fresh. Instead I took a deep lungful & thought of you, breath held.

There's no shortage of tasks that produce sculptural by-product.

Sentence, syntax tree.

Being called Perch is a precaution, in that if I'm transmogrified into the door of a sorceress's chateau for having knocked in an excessively flashy pattern, I'll eventually be able to say my name with a creak of my rusting hinges & thereby be freed.

Going to date this anonymous mynoise reviewer so we can lie abed murmuring to each other about how the hull can scarcely withstand these breakers & we may well drown in the night.

The morning after I've bought a shirt off somebody's merch table, remembering that I don't much wear tees anymore.

Put it on repeat, turn your headphones up until you lose your body every time you blink, fall back across the bed with your arms spread ready to float, feel waves & the wrecks around you, keep going until you cry or drown or come.
https://menaceruine.bandcamp.com/track/the-bosom-of-the-earth

Father Pujardov sees an amorphous blob float past in a slide of aqueous humour, says "My god...", & immediately devotes himself to Satan. I've never yet been able to get this effect by looking a priest in the eye, despite my persistent myodesopsia.

@perchingpath Been tense over this since I scheduled it, yet it took me 'til yesterday to think, "Oh, right, the fire that burnt down my house when I was small started in the ceiling of my room after some maintenance work."

Vacationing as a pair of glowing eyes in the underbrush.

A game of being repeatedly killed (unprovokedly) & resurrected (inexplicably) on a cargo vessel. To win, send the ship to the seabed with all hands aboard including your new-minted saboteuse, both allowing her to rest and retroactively justifying the crew's murderousness.

I found a sharp little fragment of metal inscrutably half-embedded in my scalp, & because I'm ever such a Pollyanna I thought, "Oh! If I were a different type of paranoid this would be very difficult! I've just ducked a crisis!"

A name for your Steganographia.